The Unseen University Librarian

My blog has now moved to http://mariegcannon.wordpress.com/

There are a number of reasons for this.

1. I wanted to change my blog name in keeping with CPD23’s advice on maintaining consistency with your personal brand and online presence, and to make it something easier to remember! 
2. Tumblr does not allow non-tumblr users to follow blog posts
3. It is easier to share and comment on blogposts on wordpress
4. Personally, I think wordpress offers a lot more flexibility with customisation and display
5. Almost everyone I know has a wordpress blog!

A fuller blog post regarding this move will be posted on my new blog later this week.

Firstly, I have been away from my blog for a long time, and this is due to the busyness which is the end of term and the amount of coursework that had to be done, as well as a dissertation proposal to be written!

However, now I am on my Easter holidays I have decided that for my personal professional development I would spend one day a week completing one of the CPD23 Things for Professional Development. As someone with an interest in web 2.0 and social media in libraries, this is something that will give me the opportunity to reflect on skills which I may already have, and to learn something (and hopefully many)  new things and additional skills that will aid me in my future career as a librarian. Of course, this will also force me to write at least 1 blog entry a week which is great!

So week 1 of CPD23 is:

“Blogging

• Thing 1: Create your own blog, write about what you hope to get out of the programme. (If you already have a blog, then you’re welcome to use that.)
• Thing 2: Explore other blogs and get to know some of the other cpd23-ers.”

Obviously I already have my own blog, and I also follow quite a lot of other blogs. All of the blogs I follow are library orientated and range from covering more indulgent topics such as the most beautiful libraries in the world, to the more serious cutting edge developments in the library and information profession. I mainly follow other blogs in order to keep myself up to date, to be aware of other’s views and opinions and to ensure that my own personal thinking remains current and innovative. The majority of these blogs I have found through twitter or through my fellow students on the MA LIS at UCL. It was actually through my fellow students @Annie_Bob and @JenniferYellin that I discovered the CPD23 course.

There were various reasons why I decided to write my own blog, and this seems to be a good opportunity to reflect on these:

1. To create a record of what I have learnt while studying my MA and through attending library-related events, and to actively reflect on these experiences
2. To publicise myself as a new professional and to create a digital identity to enable others in the library field to get to know me
3. To display my passion and interest in the library and information profession as a whole, and on specific topics that particularly interest me such as web 2.0, OPACs and discovery tools and the open access movement
4. Also, it was very strongly recommended to me by a number of library professionals from different backgrounds!

So far, I think my young fledgling blog is doing rather well on these fronts. I have had people retweet my blog entries, which recognises that there is at least some value to them that may be interesting or useful to others in the profession. This has also helped to spread my digital identity and to get my name out there in the social network of library professionals, which I think is imperative as a new professional. I have blogged exstensively on my interest in the digital humanities and the difference in user experience of the digital and the real. However, it has now come to my attention that I have not blogged much on my other special interests, and so this will get put on my ‘to do’ list! This is why reflective writing is so useful, as it brings to our attention what we have achieved so far, but also what we can improve on.

Last Thursday I attended my first LIKE, or Library Information and Knowledge Exchange, meeting which was themed on Copyright. As any UCL LIS students will know, we had just had to write an essay on copyright and I was feeling a little copyrighted out.

Anyway, I got to the pub about 7pm, got my name label, grabbed a drink, and started chatting with who turned out to be Professor Charles Oppenheim, the guest speaker for the session. He used to be a professor at Loughborough, and now works as a consultant on copyright issues.

He was very engaging and humorous, and this was exactly how his speech was; which was surprising considering the content.

First, Charles spoke on the problem that orphan works pose for mass digitisation projects. Orphan works are works that are still under copyright but the copyright owner cannot be found. It is often too expensive or too difficult to track the copyright owners, and as a result many precious items may not be digitised and may be lost as a result.

The Hargreaves review suggests to possibly pay a fee to a central body to digitise an orphan work, and then if the copyright owner makes themselves known they they can be paid a fee from the central body. Hargreaves also recommends that this applies to all mediums and not just text. However there are issues with this solution, what if the copyright owners wants the copy to stop? The copy will presumably already be available on the internet, and it would be impossible to eradicate all of the copies made.

Charles also compared UK and US copyright law, and how restrictive the fair dealing exceptions allowed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is compared to the more liberal fair use equivalent in the US.

The idea of the Hargreaves Report is to make copyright law more up to date, to

broaden exceptions (which is allowable by current EU Law) and to encourage entrepreneurial opportunities. Current copyright law was created by lobbying from the film and music industries to crack down on piracy, rather than being based on evidence. A humorous example Charles gave was that of Cliff Richard, who lobbied to get sound recording rights extended from 50 to 70 years, in line with the rights of lyric and music writers.

Hargreaves suggests extending possible exceptions to copyright law to include:

• Text and data mining – where vast volumes of data are extracted to create new and interesting information
• Parody – taking a well known music or image, etc. and parodying it
• Copying purchased CDs and ripping the music on to a computer or MP3 player (I did not realise that this was currently illegal!)
• Extending library prescribed copying for patrons which currently only applies to text, to apply to the copying of all media forms

Other recommendations Hargreaves makes includes:

• That Contractual term should never overcome the exceptions stated to copyright law, as it currently does
• That the IPO should be able to give informal legal advice
• Copyright of unpublished works should be reduced. Currently the copyright of all works, regardless of age, has been extended to 2039. Hargreaves recommends that this should change to 70 years from the estimated date of publication of the work
• UK copyright collection societies should be regulated with codes of conduct as they have quasi-legal status and rights

The government initially accepted all of Hargreaves’ recommendations, although Charles predicted that they will backtrack on many of them due to lobbying from the film and music industries - which again will entail that copyright law will still not be evidence-based.

The Digital Economy Act 2010 was also discussed, especially the 3 strikes and you are out provision. Once you have been found to be downloading illegally 3 times, your broadband will be cut off by your internet service provider. This legislation had been passed but not implemented yet. Charles argued that the wording of the legislation is extremely loose, and that the 3 strikes provision could apply to any place with public wifi; for example libraries, hotels, airports, even Starbucks. However, this is only a possible interpretation of the law and is in no way definitive, and will surely not be enforced for public organisations with wifi.

Charles’ closing comments include asking whether access to the internet is a human right, and whether any blocks to accessing the internet need to be justified to a fair extent in order to be reasonable. Also, is this legislation a little too late? So much information is already available online, and piracy websites can simply move to countries where copyright legislation is not so restrictive.

Despite myself being ‘copyrighted out’ before this meeting, I really enjoyed it. Not only because of the great food and meeting new people, but Charles was very engaging and he made the talk very relevant to the present day, and to the future of copyright and its revelancy to all media forms.

 

 

 

 

 

Although the features of the National Gallery digital collection, including the virtual tour and multiple access points, are excellent, so much more could be done to manipulate the nature of the digital and to allow users to interact with the digital paintings in a way they never can with the original artworks. Benjamin argues that technology should be used in a new and original way to create new pieces of art, and not to try and re-create artworks likes those from the past. When representing the collection digitally, there is no need to present them with the restraints and pre-conceptions of the physical National Gallery, and as such, there is a variety of ways in which the digital collection could be presented and interacted with. A way to accomplish this would be to create digital features that allow the artworks to be manipulated and interacted with, and for the users to create their own interpretations and pieces of art. The primary difference between the digital and physical art collection of the National Gallery is the seemingly infinite possibilities for user interactivity with the digital art surrogates.

You can never touch an original artwork, let alone change its colours to black and white, soften its lines or even simply paint a bright red stripe across it for no reason other than you simply want to… But you can with a digital artwork and an appropriate editing application. With the spread of Web 2.0 features across the internet, users increasingly expect to be able to contribute to websites by adding comments, tags, and creations of their own, rather than passively view websites as was the only possible way to experience the very early internet. As an art institution the National Gallery should encourage creativity.

As a philosophy graduate, I have to briefly share my thoughts on some philosophical theories of art, and how I applied them to my experience of Turner’s Dido Building Carthage. The main, and most important, difference in experiencing the painting digitally and physically is the difference in what Walter Benjamin terms the “aura” (The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age, 1935).  On viewing Turner’s masterpiece in real life, there is an experience of something that is difficult to articulate; a sense of specialness, uniqueness and history. It is unique as you experience awareness that the painting has been created by a unique human being; a human being captured in a moment of time, space and history that can never be reached again. The original Dido Building Carthage has a historic significance which provokes an emotional and intellectual response that simply does not occur when viewing the piece online. The original painting projects a sense of history which evokes a sense of fascination and emotional awe in the viewer.

There is a famous saying that ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. The digital surrogate of the painting is solely composed of code and data and not of a human being’s brush strokes; and this must surely be at the foundation of why experiencing the digital Dido Building Carthage is not as emotive as the real life work. Something is lost in translation between the physical and the digital. When the digital reproduction of the painting has been created, the historical context and unique value embedded in the very being of the physical artwork has not been successfully copied over.

Knowledge of context and one’s awareness that one is viewing a mere reproduction of an artwork may also have a great effect on the viewer’s experience. A very clear way of illustrating this is to briefly analyse this self-portrait by the artist Chuck Close. It looks very much like a photograph, but it is actually a painting. The knowledge and context that this artwork is not created by an automated machine, but has been painted by a human being, changes drastically the very way we emotionally respond to it.

The promotion of the digital as a valid format of presenting art makes the assumption that the viewing of art is a purely visual experience. But it is not, as the role of imagination is absolutely vital in our experience of art, as Benjamin observes, “A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art” (1935, p13).  But what exactly is this interactivity that is occurring between the viewer and the original that is missing with the digital representation? Walton argues in his make-believe theory that artworks function as a prop, and prescribe fictional truth and propositions to the user, who then psychologically participates and engages with the artwork in a fictional world of a game. When we are visually observing the artwork we are using it as a prop, and as we are doing so our visual experience and our reactions to it become part of the game. The world of the painting becomes a microcosm and creates an illusory fictional world. For example, Carthage is not being built in front of me, but I am seeing the building of Carthage in the game, and I am engaging with the artwork using my imagination. When the real life painting projects its aura of specialness, uniqueness and history, the user creates a connection with the painting in their contemplation of it; whether it is an imaginary or game-like connection or simply a connection to the artist and the painting’s history.

References:

Benjamin, W., 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. [Online] Available at: <http://design.wishiewashie.com/HT5/WalterBenjaminTheWorkofArt.pdf> [Accessed 23/12/2011].

Walton, K. L., 1990.  Mimesis as make-believe: on the foundations of the representational arts. London: Harvard University Press.

This is a series of blog entries summarising my thoughts on an assignment given to me while studying the Digital Resources in Humanities module at UCL. This was to compare and evaluate my experience of a digital item with its real world surrogate; and I chose Turner’s Dido Building Carthage housed at the wonderful National Gallery.

The painting itself measures 155.5 x 230cm, and is hung at eye level. The size and scale of an artwork is intentionally decided by the artist and can be a focal point, which can be lost when viewing a digital surrogate on a screen. When viewing the Dido Building Carthage in the National Gallery, what strikes me personally is the very large size of the painting, and an experience is simulated of viewing the ancient scene of the building of Carthage as if I was standing on a balcony. It is specifically the size and scale of the painting that creates this profound impact on me. However, no similar interactivity happens when viewing the same painting digitally on a laptop screen, which is approximately seven times smaller than the original artwork. The sense of size and scale present in the real life painting is completely void in the digital representation, and as such, the viewer is not seeing the painting as the artist intended, and a great deal of the emotional impact and awe felt when viewing this masterpiece in real life is lost.

However, the digital surrogate does offer a zoomable image interface, which can enhance the user’s experience of the artwork and can reveal details that may be difficult to see on the real life artwork, particularly when the artwork is large. On the digital surrogate of Dido Building Carthage it is astonishing how much detail can be seen when zoomed in fully. This feature of the digital surrogate allows the viewer to experience the smallest details of the painting and provides them with a greater understanding in this respect than can be achieved by the original artwork, and this is extremely important when considering the qualitative difference in between the physical and digital experience.

In studying the Digital Resources in Humanities module at UCL, I was given the assignment to compare and evaluate my experience of a digital item with its real world surrogate. Instead of choosing a book to write on, as you may expect, I chose to focus on my favourite painting; Turner’s Dido Building Carthage housed at the wonderful National Gallery. Due to vast improvements in image-capturing technology and the increased access to the internet, cultural and heritage institutions are increasingly presenting their collections digitally for users to view online, without ever visiting the physical site of these items. The rapidly growing digitisation of art collections by cultural institutions around the world create a need for certain questions to be explored;

are these virtual tours and digital surrogates of artworks intended to be ‘good’ enough to replace the user experiencing the artworks in real life, and if they are not, then what exactly is it that the digital surrogate is missing?

The first aspect compared was the digital and physical arrangement of the art collection, as the arrangement is extremely important in providing a history and a context for the artworks, and can provide the viewer with a more enriched experience. In the National Gallery, the collection is arranged geographically by time periods. These allow for the user to progress through the gallery and view how the artworks change and progress both in subject matter and technique as the periods change. It also allows the user to compare paintings and artists with their contemporaries, and provides the user with an impression of art in Europe at different time periods. However to view Dido Building Carthage physically, access points are limited to the ones available from the adjoining rooms.  While on the website there are not only numerous, but very useful access points for the user, such as through “Artist A-Z”, “Century”, “30 highlight paintings”, “Latest arrivals” where you can view acquisitions by year, and “Take a chance!” which randomly generates 10 paintings from the collection for you to view. The experience of the digital regarding access points is extremely superior to that of the physical, which is restricted to only being organised in a single way. Through the virtual tour the website offers the option to view the collection arranged exactly as it is physically, but it additionally allows the user to view the collection arranged in other scholarly beneficial ways. The very nature of the digital enables multiple narratives to items, such as Dido Building Carthage, which not only creates enhanced access for the user, but can also create a greater understanding of the painting. For example, the user can choose and follow the particular narrative of the artist Turner, so that the user will have had the opportunity to read a short bibliography of the artist, and view other paintings by him and also by Claude before viewing Dido Building Carthage. Unfortunately, this extent of information is not available at the physical artwork in the National Gallery, presumably due to aesthetic considerations. By creating different learning paths to the painting the website greatly enhances the experience of the digital Dido Building Carthage. It provides context and historical and bibliographical information to the viewer who can perceive the digital artwork with a greater awareness and knowledge, which may reveal aspects of the artwork that otherwise may not have been noticed.

What was especially great about writing the blog entries for Rare Books Revealed and Rare Books Revealed 2 for Senate House Library was being able to see digitisation in action on the books I had selected to blog about. I was shown the different scanners and cameras used to obtain varying quality pictures and also to deal with different sized and shaped items (Special Collections has many oddly shaped, and sometimes very large items!). Digitisation is still a relatively new service provided at Senate House Library, and is an area that is rapidly increasing and becoming very prominent in modern day libraries.

Of course, when you hear ‘digitisation’ and ‘libraries’ in the same sentence, you instinctively think of e-books, and how wonderful for user access it is that libraries are digitising their collections so that they are availble online. And of course, this is a great and wonderful thing, and will certainly play a large part in the nature of libraries in the future.

On hearing ‘digitisation’ and ‘libraries’, you may also think ‘expensive’, and true, this is certainly the case.

However, digitisation of collections made available on library websites not only increase access for users, as you first think, but can also be used to advertise collections and actually attract more visitiors to come and visit the physical collection in person, particularly if the library possesses special collections or rare books. As such, digitisation can be used to generate revenue by increasing the number of visitors to the library. Digitisation equipment may be initially expensive to purchase for a

library, but can prove to be very proftable in the long-term. More and more libraries are using digitisation to generate profit; one of the more famous examples being the British Library’s eBook Treasures, where the British Library has digitised some of its most precious items such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground andLeonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel, and are selling them as eBooks for prices as high as £14.99. The British Library have also created a 19th century Historical Collection app available from iTunes here, which provides cloud-based access to over 45,000 historical works and has recently won the Publishing Innovation Award.

Other ways of generating income through digitisation is to display the collection online using low quality images (which accomplishes displaying the collection while ensuring a low webpage loading time for users), but offer the service of providing  high quality images of scans from books. Libraries with special collections or rare

books would particularly benefit by implementing such a service; not only by generating income from sales of digital scans, by increasing access for users and by promoting and advertising the collection to attract new visitors to the library. An example of a memory institution who has applied this service very successively is the National Gallery. The National Gallery offers the purchasing of high quality images not only online, but also in the Gallery itself, where you can crop and edit the picture before purchasing a print or digital copy.

In conclusion, digitisation can be very expensive both to purchase and to maintain, and it must be taken into consideration how long it will be before the equipment becomes technologically out of date and will be unable to provide the high standard of files that users may be expecting in ten years time. However, although digitisation is initally expensive, the financial benefits achievable through the promotion of the library collection to a world-wide audience in addition to the potential sales of high quality images or e-books, is certainly worth considering for libraries with special collections.

Belatedly, I have realised it would be useful to do a blog entry on my work placement at Senate House Library, which was a good few weeks ago! However, in my defence I had not yet begun this blog until after the placement had finished, and in fact it was my work placement which inspired me to create a blog in the first place. Just a warning that this will probably be in quite a few installments!

UCL organises 2 week work placements for all full time students on the MA Library and Information Studies course. During my placement I lucky enough to be based in the Special Collections department of Senate House Library, and I was given an ongoing project of cataloguing pre-1800 printed

books within the Library’s Fixed Location sequence. This involved going to the basement to collect the books, and bringing them up to the Sterling Library Reading Room where I created my base. I then searched for the title of the book in the Millenium catalogue to see whether there was already a record for the item at Senate House Library, but 90% of the time this was not the case. This task was made difficult as many of the books were in Latin, French and German as well as English, and the font was often a Gothic script that was extremely difficult to read. If the item did not have a catalogue record at Senate House, I searched the catalogues of other institutions, such as the British Library and Cambridge and Oxford Universities. If they had a record of the same item I was trying to

catalogue, I chose the most detailed and accurate one and imported it into Senate House’s Library catalogue. Some of the books also had a Senate House classmark pencilled inside, and I would add this onto the imported catalogue record. All other changes and personal additions that would need to be added to the record that pertained to the unique copy held by Senate House would be added by the Rare Books Librarian and the Special Collections cataloguer at a later date.   

The Rare Books Librarian, Jonathan Harrison, encouraged me to take my time to browse and enjoy the books, and kindly asked me to select a few favourites and to write a blog entry about them, Rare Books Revealed and Rare Books Revealed 2. It was this experience that first sparked the idea that I should begin my own blog to help develop my own ideas and to track my progress in librarianship. I was also given advice by a subject librarian at Senate House to create an online presence in order to publicise myself and to get more involved with others in the library network.

For me, the library has always been a special place. I remember as a child being excited at the thought of my mum taking my brother and me to the local public library and getting my next wonderful book out (and video if I was lucky!). When I reached secondary school, I used to love going to the library and getting advice from the librarian on the next book I should read. At university the library became my safe haven, a place where I could research and complete coursework without distraction. And this was a great comfort to me when I was in a frenzied state of study-induced panic.

Libraries have always been warm, welcoming and friendly places for me.

And this is what we come to expect from libraries; a space where anyone is welcome to come and enjoy a book. But not only that, libraries have always been an exciting place for me, and this does not seem to be a common and popular perspective held of libraries. I am not even talking about the secret passageways or the books that trigger a secret door to be opened in the mysteriously wonderful libraries featured in novels. My love of libraries meant that I actually could not wait to go to the library to find the next fantastic book to read, a book so exciting that I could not put it down. Yet as public libraries are closing across the country, and less and less visitors are accessing libraries as a result, this passion and excitement for books may be diminished, or worse, never discovered.

In a time of what the future world might call the Digital Age, where there are more and more distractions such as hundreds of TV channels to watch, and  potentially addictive internet browsing (facebook, twitter and cake baking websites for me!), it is vitally important for librarians to remind and possibly re-introduce the joy of books to the public. E-books have gone some way to do this; not only by making books modern, but by simply reminding people of the exitence of books, which they may have forgotten in their busy and largely digital lifestyles.

However, I have gone off on a tangent!

It has always been an ambition of mine that one day I would have my own personal library. Not necessarily a very big or grand one (although ideally), but simply a room in my house that only contains novels, and can be used solely for reading, with no other distractions.

This is a dream of mine that I have had as long as I can remember, well, for as long as I could read! As an ambition that began as a child, the shape of my perfect library always took the form of the one featured in my favourite Disney film… of course it could only be… Beauty and the Beast! The Beast’s library has huge windows to let lots of light in, more books than can possibly be read in a lifetime, and a cosy fireplace for a lovely space to read.

But if I had only just been born in this current Digital Age, how would this dream be altered? Would I be dreaming of a library as I still think of it - a warm and welcoming room full of wooden bookcases of beautiful books, with an aroma of that papery

smell… or would I be dreaming of a virtual library of e-books on my iPad? Although it is the same dream in the terms of possessing a large enough number of books to justifiably call it a ‘library’, the modern manifestation of it as a virtual, untouchable space is just not the same, and nowhere as special as the dream of the physical library.

This is because the library is not just a collection of books. It is the space which houses the books; a space where you can sit and read without fear of being disturbed; a space where you can fully relax and submerge yourself into the world of the book, and a space where you can take shelter from the real world, and take a holiday from real life.

Sadly I currently live in a small flat, and the nearest I can get to fulfilling my dream at the moment is purchasing this really cool reading chair (which I am very, very tempted to do!). But one day, despite the Digital Age we live in, I still hope to have the perfect, physical library space of my own!

Yesterday I attended #LibCampBrunel, at, yes you guessed it, the Library of Brunel University in West London. This infamous success of Library Camp 2011 in Birmingham made me really eager to go to this mini Library Camp, which was meant to tide us over until Library Camp in late 2012.

The idea of a Library Camp, rather than a Library Conference is a FANTASTIC one.

Here is an explanation of Library Camp:

“Library Camp will run as an “unconference” where participants decide on the programme at the beginning of the event, working on the principle that the sum of the knowledge, experience and expertise of the people in the room is likely to be greater than that of those on the stage at traditional conferences.

The idea is based on “Open Space Technology” (Harrison Owen) which has four main principles and one law:-

1. Whoever comes is the right people

2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have

3. Whenever it starts is the right time

4. When it’s over, it’s over”

Source: librarycamp.co.uk

So yesterday, after a 2 hour journey to get from one end of London to the other, I was greeted by the friendly Library staff of Brunel, in a large meeting room playing Will Smith’s Wild Wild West song (the Camp was Wild West themed), smelling of delicious fresh coffee, with tables filled with Krispy Kreme donuts and many other cakes and savoury snacks.   

Once the clock struck 11 and about 30 of us were there, everyone quickly

introduced themselves to the group, and pitches on topics of discussion for the day were made. Pitches were written on very colourful post-its, which were then placed on a board over 3 sessions, with 4 pitches per session, in spaces thematically named such as Kansas and Nevada.

BREAKOUT 1: CAREER DEVELOPMENT

For the first session I chose to go to a talk on career development. There were a number of graduate trainees who also attended this talk, as well as a librarian trying to move from a commercial to the academic sector. Some general advice was given, such as doing as much volunteering, work placements, temping and short contracts as possible at the beginning of our careers to discover which sector or area we might wish to specialise in, before focusing on that area fully. We were also advised to go to as many open days and library tours as possible, especially at the British Library.

A list of useful websites to use for job hunting was also given:

• http://www.jobsforinfopros.com/
• http://www.jobs.ac.uk/categories/librarianship
• http://www.indeed.co.uk/
• http://www.lisjobnet.com/jobs/jobs/

Recruitment agencies were also mentioned:

• http://www.tfpl.com/
• http://thelibrarycareer.blogspot.com/p/job-vacancies.html
• http://www.suehill.com/
• http://www.glenrecruitment.co.uk/ (especially good for corporate sector)

Other advice to us newbies in the library profession was to join as many professional associations and voluntary organisations as possible in order to gain useful and relevant experience, such as volunteering for the role of Treasurer in order to gain experience in budgeting, and of course to socially network with others in the profession.

Chartership and its usefulness in career development was also discussed. Very briefly, chartership is a mentoring scheme involving reflective practice, and can take years to complete. The mentee has to create a personal development plan and collect evidence of professional activity, to display understanding of their role and how being a professional helps the mentee in fulfilling their job role. The mentee and mentor meet frequently, and the mentor takes the position of the objective friend, and helps the mentee in their reflective practice and advises them on their portfolio.

LUNCH

We then re-gathered as a group for lunch, which consisted of eating many plates of tasty home-made pies and cupcakes, but also getting to know people better and lots of discussions

about baking! There seems to be a disproportionate number of librarians who enjoy baking, and one person suggested that it may be to do with the general personality of librarians. Librarians tend to be perfectionists, creative, and generous people who enjoy baking in order to share their delicious creations with others. After yesterdays impressive cake spread I am inclined to agree!

BREAKOUT 2: NEXT GENERATION CATALOGUES

This session, which was very popularly attended, was led by Andrew Preater, the Information Systems Manager at Senate House Library of the University of London, where I had my 2 week work placement. Senate House implemented a new Encore catalogue in the summer of 2011, and Andrew discussed some problems encountered, and its differing purpose and functionality to the old catalogue, WebPAC.

The next generation catalogues (OPAC 2.0) was first described by the group as:

• beginning in 2006
• using web 2.0 features
• looking and operating more like Google (more supportive of browsing)
• targeting novice users, who may make spelling mistakes and will tend to search by keyword
• possibly allowing social interaction and cloud hosting
• using meta-data from the catalogue records in a better, more improved way

Andrew described how he positioned the new catalogue aggressively; funneling searches in the old catalogue into the new and ensuring that the search on the homepage searched the new catalogue and not the old catalogue. This was to encourage users to use the new over the old catalogue. Currently it is approximately 50/50 usage between the new and old catalogues.

An ongoing problem is acquiring user feedback on using the new catalogue, and a difference in staff and user feedback became apparent, as staff use the catalogues for different purposes to users. Furthermore, a lot of the negative feedback from staff was actually to do with the bad quality meta-data present in the catalogue records themselves, and not how Encore used and displayed the meta-data. Structured data is extremely important, as if an item is not well catalogued, then it will not necessarily be findable by users on the OPAC.

A positive aspect of the new catalogue was how well it uses meta-data, as it can use geographical places from the record’s subject headings as a facet of the search. It also prioritises the 245a MARC field, so that a journal with the title ‘Text’, which may have been difficult to find with such a common word in the old catalogue, floats straight to the top of the search results of the new Encore catalogue. Additionally, users find it aesthetically pleasing to see book cover art in their search results, which was not possible in the old catalogue.

Some criticisms were mentioned of the new Encore catalogue, such as it being feature incomplete. Not all of the features were transferred from the old catalogue to the Encore catalogue. A useful feature that is missing from the new Encore catalogue is the ability to search under multiple date ranges, and not just one date range. This is to do with the fact that only certain facets can be combined to filter a search, such as combining multiple formats, but not all facets have this ability. Additionally, all patron information such as the user’s account, loan history, etc.  is still only accessible on the old catalogue. However the next release of Encore should include this feature, and should therefore encourage users to further use the new catalogue.

Other people in the group also discussed their experience with OPAC 2.0s in their libraries, and it has been found that personalisation features have not been particularly useful to users. Tagging and reviews have not been popularly used in these libraries, and where tagging has happened in academic libraries with tags such as “Module G07” for items useful for a particular course, librarians are worried that these tags will have to be altered individually if that module/course ever changes.

Andrew also brought up how difficult it is to get user feedback on the new Encore catalogue, and it was suggested that maybe spending time on the enquiry desk, and seeing how students use the catalogue to conduct what may be advanced searches would be useful. However, this is an ongoing challenge that needs to be further considered.

This session on next generation catalogues has inspired me to write a case study for my MA on the implementation of Encore as an OPAC 2.0 at Senate House Library. Consequently I am sure I will write further blog entries on this as I do more research, which is why this particularly blog entry is more a summary of the session rather than my personal thoughts on the subject, and those who could not make the camp may find these descriptive summary notes useful (hopefully).

If I could summarise this Library Camp in one line, it would be:

A lot of food for thought… and a lot of food!

Before deciding on the name of the Unseen University Librarian, I asked for any name suggestions for an Irish Dancing, baking librarian blog. Here are a couple of my favourites that my friends came up with:

The Book of Jigging Cupcakes

This image of bouncing cupcakes with dancing shoes on made me want to giggle! However, I wanted a more librarian focused blog name. Another name that was suggested which I really liked:

The Cake Whisperer

Now if this was primarily a cake blog, then I would have used this name for certain. I love baking, particularly character cakes, and I will blog about cakes in the future. However, just for now, here is a library cake which I made in 2011 to say goodbye and thank you to the law library where I had my graduate trainee-ship.

Just after Christmas, I was lucky enough to secure a 2 week work placement at Senate House Library of the University of London. Senate House Library has a wonderful history and and many, many rare and special books in its collection.

The building

itself is very distinctive and extremely impressive. It has 19 floors (although most of this is closed stacks), and there is an urban myth that the Nazis were planning to use it as their HQ once they conquered England in WW2. But of course, I was more interested in the library and their special collections than the building itself!

I saw many wonderful books during my time there, including first editions of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf, signed works of Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx and some of the earliest (and most beautifully illuminated) printed books in the entire world from the 15^th century  among many, many others. However, the highlight of my stay was viewing the Terry Pratchett collection, and it was this that inspired the name of my blog, the ‘Unseen University Librarian’.

Colin Smythe, who was Terry Pratchett’s agent, has very generously do

nated first editions of most (if not all) of the Discworld novels, and not only in the English language, but in every language they were ever published in! Even more exciting is that Colin Smythe also donated all kinds of weird and wonderful Discworld memorabilia, including computer games, cartoons on VHS, mugs, keyrings, candles, board games, figurines , ornaments and even bottles of ‘Ridcully’s Revenge’ beer!

Of course, this is in many ways a nightmare for a librarian – how do you go about cataloguing a keyring, or a boardgame? Even more importantly, how do you ensure that youpreserve correctly such a wide variety of unusual materials, such as wax, resin and beer? Discworld is one of the most popular modern classics, with a huge fan base all over the world,

and Pratchett’s legacy must be preserved for future generations to enjoy. Therefore, Senate House Library is the best place for this wonderful collection to be housed, treasured and displayed. And with this in mind, what better librarian to name my blog after than Pratchett’s wonderful creation of the ape Librarian, of Discworld’s magical Unseen University.

The Librarian in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld probably has the most difficult job in world, whether that is Discworld or any other world! In a library that has been warped by magic so that books are chained up to protect the students, rather than the other way round (as at the Bodleian library), where time and distance are only vaguely defined and consequently the Library contains every book ever written, possibly written, unwritten and yet to be written, and where you can enter the Library from one city and exit in another… and of course where a perfectly human librarian was transformed into an orang-utan, who only deigns to say “ook”, or if really angry, “Eeek!”.

As an aspiring librarian myself, it only seems fair to dedicate my blog to such an awe-inspiring figure; someone who miraculously manages to prevent the books in his Library from causing havoc and generally destroying the universe, but also someone who is easily satisfied with banana bribes. I feel there is a lot to learn from the ape Librarian, and so I find that all there is left for me to say for now is simply

“ook”